Podcast: Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology

A series of vignettes about the characters in Vampire:The Masquerade: Blood Doll, read by their actors.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - William
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William is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

Joshua did whatever his clients asked of him – refurbish existing properties or rebuild them from scratch. He was trying to be better known among the Mercer Island crowd. The islanders were always looking to expand or rebuild their domiciles, which could cost hundreds of thousands of 1960s dollars for the level of modern they wanted. His company, Farrington builders, had a good crew who had worked together for a decade, starting with Northside homes and moving into the big leagues as soon as they had the credentials. Joshua never visited the clients outside of a job site though. Not in their clubs or their bars or their social venues. He knew what they wanted him for, but with the cash he was pulling in, he was planning to visit these places someday as a paying customer.

Which is why he found it extremely odd when a new client asked for two very strange things. One was a mansion on an existing property in Queen Anne. And the second was that all its windows were to be facades. And done in a very old style, long out of fashion. The client, William, was very insistent though, “as modern as he would allow it,” explained George, the manager of William’s companies. William also wanted a strict timetable for the work so he would know the exact night he could move in. William and George already had lavish properties on Mercer Island, and it made little sense they’d also want Queen Anne housing on properties that did not even have a view of Puget Sound. Every businessman was grabbing waterfront property but Joshua knew better than to question old money.

After a week of finagling with the architect, Joshua began demolition at the site of the new mansion. The teardown was witnessed by the neighbors who brought their children to watch the old church stripped to the bones and toppled. It had undergone some hard times, and been rewarded for its perseverance with enough cash to be rebuilt elsewhere, miles away to the north. Seattle was near impossible to travel around without a car, but the old church had been there for citizens without cars. Joshua expected to find paint on his own car for doing this job but fortunately enough, he never did. It had been hard to retain the church after the parish minister had died that summer, and now dealing with this horrid, windowless mansion was quite another.

On the night after the final paint job had been completed, with the mansion assembled a few weeks past its scheduled date, Joshua took a walk inside its ornate, fabulous rooms. As he purveyed the great halls within, he stopped to make sure he was hearing correctly. The walls seemed to be breathing. He put out his hand on one to confirm it was slowly moving in and out. And yet the drywall remained unbroken. He thought he must have been experiencing delusions from the paint fumes, and turned to head out, when he found William standing right behind him, in all his regal splendor.

“You shouldn’t be here,” William said. “But now that you are, you have seen my work. I’m imbuing the house with life.”

“That’s fantastic,” Joshua said. “I really have to be going now.”

“You would like to go,” William said. “But new life needs to be fed. And the house is very hungry.”

“Okay, you’re drunk or something,” Joshua said. “Let me by.”

“Of course,” William said, and stepped aside.

Joshua turned down the hall he had spent months building, reinforcing, and painting. But around the next corner, he found himself in an entirely different room. One he had not built. A vast space with an amber globe in the center made from glass in the style of Modernism from the 1920s. He hurried through to a different hallway, with floral print on the walls that he had not put up, lined with doors made from wood that did not grow in the States. Joshua began to run, finding himself in one strange room after the next, lost in a labyrinth he thought he knew, terrified that the house had become something other than his creation. That nothing of his remained within it, and that he would never find his way out. And no windows. No windows anywhere. Just as William had requested. There was simply. No. Way. Out.

And then he felt a strong, clawed hand on his shoulder, reaching out seemingly from the void, holding him in place.

He looked back. It was George, William’s businessman.

“Good heavens,” George said. “The house is not that large. Just, get out. Get out before he notices.”

And Joshua once more saw the house as it was, as he had built it. And while he could, he fled.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Judith (2)
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Judith (2) is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Dee Arbacauskas.

Transcript:

Judith began her evening wondering why she never got coffee anymore. First off was the obvious. Her face. But with the invention of the modern phone, and its many, many delivery apps, she no longer had an excuse. Of course, using a phone was dangerous for someone as paranoid as her job made her be. But Aaralyn had left the phone on her nightstand to be used. As was a bit of cash someone had sent her Venmo account six months ago. Yes, Judith thought to herself. This night, I will get a coffee.

Of course, none of the coffee shops were open except for Denny’s. At this time of night when her blood was pumping and she hadn’t yet looked at all the jobs Aaralyn had waiting for her, her world was her oyster. It was time to re-engage with the bean, as she once had at the turn of the century. (No, the turn before that one.) Coffee had been the rage with all strata of classes. Light diluted coffees by the news stands, thick African coffees with a purposeful amount of sludge at the bottom, or exciting gourmet coffees of dubious origins, each with a story about how they were brewed in the ritzier parts of town. They were nothing like the moderate, temperate coffees from dried grounds or fresh crushed beans of today. Coffee had been with Judith every night, back when she knew a gal who didn’t mind her face and was exceedingly proud of her house blends.

That night, Judith opened the delivery app and confirmed that the only thing that served coffee was the Denny’s and, if she was feeling brave, the dumpsters behind every Starbucks in the city. With trepidation, she ordered a very large cup and a plate of fries to push the delivery price over the minimum fifteen dollars. The fries would, of course, go straight to the can for the rats and crows to fight over…. to share! Share together. Judith was a bitch whose cynical nature would make even Sylvia Plath’s nose wrinkle, but something inside her wanted the creatures of the night and gutter to support one another as clearly no one else was.

Bing-bong. The delivery driver had read the obnoxiously long list of directions that Judith had left to help them find her place, a Mother-in-Law sublet which did not want to be found. Judith opened her door and there, among the rosemary, sage, and other herbs in her garden, lay the oily paper bag and cardboard cup holder, capable of securing four cups but only containing one. Judith lifted the cup of ancient coffee, brewed who knows how long ago and left to sit for the entire night, and put it to her lips. She drank it down, warm and bitter, and reminded herself once more why she never got coffee, before chucking the bag and cup into the neighbor’s trash, and then preparing herself for the grim tasks of her day.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Lorea and Siobhan
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Lorea and Siobhan is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Katherine Cross.

Transcript:

Today is not Lorea’s day and so help whatever gods she believes in, it won’t improve tomorrow either. Vespa and Helios were the cutest couple when Helios first moved to town. Folks would find them together on Rainier rooftops and South Seattle street corners, wearing doggy ears and paw gloves. But Vespa needed a lot of emotional support. It’s why she began dating someone out of state in the first place. She brought them here and then Helios didn’t like to be used like that, and started telling anyone who would hear xer that the Sodo Anarch collective were abusive trash.

This was only mildly Lorea’s problem until she saw her name of the job board for forming the restorative justice crew to aid Vespa and Helios. Lorea wouldn’t actually have to be on the crew. But she’d have to interview Vespa and, somehow, Helios, and then ask around who would be the best people to intervene in this affair.

Lorea waited at the Georgetown bar where members of the collective routinely gathered to discuss collaborative duties, and ambushed Siobhan when she came in. “Siobhan, please,” Lorea begged. Lorea, who owned a warehouse and the trucks who filled it from the docks. Lorea, the physically strongest of the collective. Lorea, almost on bended knee before Siobhan.

“Please,” Lorea said. “Let me handle the mutual aid food purchase and prep this week. I know you don’t want to do it. I’m sure you can handle Vespa and Helios. You know them. They know you.”

“No,” Siobhan said. “We don’t fucking trade roles, especially in organizing a restorative justice crew. Vespa and Helios will fucking notice you didn’t want to help them and there’ll be no point in making the crew in the first place.”

Lorea’s watch beeped with a reminder that she needed to be at the waterfront in half an hour.

“What do you want?” Lorea said. “I don’t have the time or the spoons to handle everything going into forming a crew. I am fucking up to my ears in handling shit for half the collective already? I don’t want to start calling in favors. I know I am the last person to call in favors from the collective. But. Forget it. I have to go. I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I’m sorry.”

Siobhan watched a very frazzled Lorea leave the bar for her enormous black truck that looked like every other enormous black truck cosplaying a police car. She wondered what it would take; when would be the final straw to get Lorea to leave the collective. Or at least take some extended time off leaving Arturo in the lurch, if he ever wanted to keep working at the warehouse.

Siobhan gathered with the others around two tables pressed together, every side packed with chairs, and prepared to spend the night itemizing funds gathered for the Rainier members’ rent. Among the list of people needing help was Vespa. Someone at the table would have to ask the collective-shattering question; should they help out Helios as well? Is Helios still part of the collective, despite speaking ill of it, watching it abandon xer, and now possibly even leaving xer destitute? Would Helios even take the cash? What if it went into xer’s GoFundMe anonymously? Which of them would be the ones to ask Vespa if she was even comfortable with any of this?

Lorea. It had to start with Lorea. They just needed a volunteer to tell Lorea what she already knew. The wheels of justice were bound to a track, reliant on steps and stages in order, and for want of a Lorea, the cause would be lost.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Samael and Elijio
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Samael and Elijio is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

George solemnly regards the numbers in William’s ledger, line by line, until they find one that does not match the expected figure. They put the book down and pick up their coat and hat, calling for their carriage and driver. They step outside into the clouded night. They give directions and set off, hours on end, stuck in a rattling carriage without light. George brings the latest serial of Mr. Dickens’ to try to make the time pass on the way

And they are under a balcony of an ornate home owned by a family Elijio trusts. Elijio slides into the shadow under the full moon with George and they wrap their fingers together, staring into the wells of each others’ pupils. Then they kiss, tasting each others’ lips and tongues, greedily stealing what precious liquid exists in each others’ maws. Their hands unlock, fighting against buttons, collars, digging until they reach bare skin, flicking nipples, clawing bosoms, demanding every ounce of heat from the other. They are careful not to leave marks, but it would be so easy and a lovely reminder about this secret tryst

And George’s carriage stops outside the house of Mr. and Mrs. Monday, who were given charge by William to manage the finances of trade in this seaside village. George steps down the carriage’s side and enjoys a bit of steadiness before ascending to the Monday’s door. They rap once, twice, thrice, until a servant, half-asleep and pale, answers. George does not wait for permission to enter. They saunter by while the servant nips at their heels as a puppy. “M’lord, you cannot go in. The sir and madam are sleeping!”

“I assure you,” George gives all the response they intend to. “That is the last thing they are doing.”

George walks upstairs to the Monday’s bedroom and without hesitation, breaks down the door where

Elijio’s hands are the first to plunge into George’s trousers. George’s cock bears a deep hunger. “If you’re going to be base about it,” they say and run their fingers down Elijio’s chest until they’ve grasped their prize. But Elijio is the stronger of the two and forces George against the wall, kissing them for good measure, ears open for anyone who might have heard them like

Mrs. Monday screams a full second before George slaps their clawed hand over her mouth. Mr. Monday charges at George and breaks a chair over their back. George is undeterred. “Mr. Monday,” they say. “Six hundred, twenty-three pounds, and four shillings or I make one of you a widower. And I haven’t decided which yet.”

“You can’t ask that of us,” Mr. Monday begs. “Our family has debts. There is no money to give.”

“You behave as if I care,” George says, feeling William’s stare burning their own back. Feeling

Elijio’s own mouth consuming their cock, in and out, in and out with that nasty, incomparable tongue. George wants to enjoy it. Elijio wants to enjoy it. They have about fifteen minutes left before they need to stop and return to work.

How do you live in the moment when the past and future beat on you like George on Mr. Monday for a paltry sum of cash, like Elijio on George to feel something in their small, savage lives, or like William on the two of them if he ever catches them together again in anything but a professional capacity?

George extracts several teeth from Mr. Monday while exploring Elijio’s fine, sharp maw and there is no escape for any of them, and it feels like there never, ever will be.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Leviathan
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Leviathan is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Trunk Slamchest.

Content warning: Animal harm.

Transcript:

In the 1970s, the inlet by Whidby Island in Puget Sound was used to trap an orca pod whose members were netted and separated, calves torn screaming from their mothers. The orca were shipped across the United States to various sea parks to begin lives of servitude and rebellion. But not many know this was the second attempt at acquiring orca to mold and control.

The Leviathan project began in the early 1920s with a proposal from a young scientist who wondered why no one had tried such a thing before. The scientist’s coterie kidnapped and slew various ne’er do wells and ruffians who possessed the required blood type, drained them, and injected the blood into fresh salmon carcasses. Naturally, the orca avoided that bait like the plague. Despite a decade of experimentation with other mediums, including whale, seal, and even moose, the Leviathan project was eventually forced to be abandoned.

Thirty years later, after a second World War, a second scientist dusted off the Leviathan proposal with the understanding that the orca needed additional motivation to consume blood they innately feared. This would require the capture of an orca, costing a not insignificant amount for a crew who would provide the needed discretion. The orca they chose was W285, a transient orca not of any local pod, but who still regularly visited the area. Unfortunately, they found her to be a fierce loner, and required a full whaling vessel in the 1950s when popular opinion was turning against hunting cetaceans. It took several attempts over the years as W285 grew wily and harder to track. But that’s how it is with hunting. Eventually, someone’s luck runs out.

In the early 1960s, W285 was harpooned, netted, captured, and then brought to a facility off the coast of Aberdeen, Washington. She was locked in a reinforced concrete tank with one end open to the sea. The scientists understood she was an intelligent creature. They were counting on it. More blood-filled salmon was dropped into a small cage in her tank, onto a platform with ropes that led to the gate barring W285’s passage to the ocean. The message was clear. Eat and you go free.

Eventually, she did eat.

The Seattle coterie continued feeding her over the coming decades as Leviathan grew larger, faster, and stronger. She began to hunt them too, anywhere she could get more of their precious blood. The project, once scoffed at, became an outstanding, but unrepeatable, success.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Naval Liaison
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Naval Liaison is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Katherine Cross.

Transcript:

Shelly is exactly what the Navy wants out of a career woman. She bought a white picket house in East Bremerton with her husband who cares for her two dogs, Shiloh and Midnight. She has a home office where she reviews the latest technology journals when she isn’t on base. When she is, she teaches an occasional class at the academy about her work as a liaison; accompanying people important to the Armed Forces on the base, and discussing the base’s history and any work that might be interesting to them. She develops portfolios and presentations, and her favorite thing is to go stand under the aircraft carrier at the dock and be humbled and overtaken by its majesty.

Shelly is attractive but professional, and doesn’t want kids. Even the generals have stories about her going beyond the call of duty to bring a client a particular vintage they adore, or arranging for a high level demonstration of the base’s more confidential projects. Like the Army brats they keep sending over, who have their own area of the base that few have the clearance to enter. Of course, she knows what goes on there, and dislikes all of it.

Shelly enjoys a vodka tonic on her days off at home, sitting on a porch in a neighborhood the HOA keeps pristine. The neighborhood cat, Lemonade, stops by with a present for her – a small finch, unmoving, with one wing broken. Shelly shoos Lemonade away and goes inside to fetch an old newspaper for the body. Her husband still enjoys the paper in the mornings, even it is mostly conspiracy fluff and outright lies at this point. Shelly scoops up the bird, its beautiful spindly feathers rustling in the breeze, its dainty beak resting shut on the printed word.

She saw one of the Army brats once, during the day, cheeks sallow, mouth hung open, eyes shut, and once again had to swallow her fear and go home for another drink.

She tosses the bird’s corpse in the compost bin, where it will become mulch for a garden somewhere; laden with banana stickers, shredded paper plates, and also one beak where the remainder of the bird has been chewed up and rotted away. Good things grow from mulch. Berries and fruit and all sorts of lovely flowers from the garden. But at work, only one thing grows from those Army kids, who know no better, and spend the daylight hours in stupor. They shouldn’t exist. It’s a mockery of life, a travesty of an institution that should know better, that used to instill pride in servicemembers. But now? Now they just chew them up, spit them out, and send them out again, barely themselves, barely anything.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Rachel
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Rachel is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Amber Ashe.

Transcript:

“Have you ever thought of presenting yourself as an exhibit?” Aaralyn asks Rachel, with a dash of mischievousness in her eyes. Rachel knows it is important to placate the client. The client keeps the gallery in business. The gallery’s purpose is to find art worth displaying that speaks to people with upscale tastes. Something that has a certain expression, haunting, exciting, alluring, enrapturing. It can’t be strange. Strange doesn’t move product.

Rachel understands how much she knows of her clients’ tastes; born and raised in Connecticut on the edge of a fancy neighborhood, she ate with these people’s children, played with them, listened to their families’ expectations, and even visited their homes, provided she followed their extensive rules. The parents loved to pretend their children’s friends were deserving of being shown around what was, to them, an ordinary house. Certainly not as nice as the Drummond’s or the Vanderville’s houses. But acceptable.

Still, to this strange child, it must be seem like Oz, which briefly makes their parents feel better. Rachel noticed the cultural signifiers that filled these homes; their lamps’ shape and light temperature needed to coordinate with the room. The tables and chairs could clash if they clashed nicely. Rachel asks her clients at the gallery for photos of their spaces, and makes recommendations like she is a child visiting this glamorous, petty world. She has a sense of what these people endure, and how they surround themselves with feelings and ambiance; great sand bags filled with primal urges heaving down the stresses of eighty to one hundred hour work weeks. And being better than someone, anyone, they take seriously.

Rachel bought this gallery out as a favor from one of her parents’ friends, who felt Rachel would do well if she had a leg to stand on. On her first day in the gallery, she tossed everything away; the clay wash basin that folded up on one edge like a reclining woman, the mirror shaped as an owl’s nest, and the painting of the view looking down from the Seattle Space Needle. Everything was sold to other galleries at a discount so she could start again, fresh, like her parents’ friends could have and chose not to. She visited universities, dredged up artists on Craig’s List, attended showings in basements and tunnels under the city. She asked artists for the sorts of things she remembered her friends’ parents having. Maybe with a twist. She wants her clients to remember their own childhoods, the things that made them feel comfortable, the rustic fifty-thousand dollar chairs, the chandeliers that eschewed crystal and bronze.

Her art does not challenge. It is not whimsical. It is familiar. It is comforting. It is almost a dream made form. And thus, it is exactly what her clients want.

Until Aaralyn stopped by. Her tastes were nothing Rachel had experienced before. She had refused to take this old school, muscle-toned flapper of a woman on as a client. But Aaralyn did make the effort to explain what pieces she was looking for. Aaralyn took her out to dinner, brought her home, and explained what each piece of the walls and tables meant to Aaralyn. Rachel was spellbound and did her best to find one thing Aaralyn wanted. And then.

“Have you ever thought of presenting yourself as an exhibit?”

“No,” Rachel replies. She hasn’t.

And Aaralyn smiles.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Jotham
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Jotham is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

The thing about slander is that it only lasts a couple decades in leftist orgs. It matters forever. Nobody forgets a betrayal for a break-up or a threat made to the wrong person under duress. But the shockwaves only last a couple decades at most, by Jotham’s estimate.

They say Jotham sold out, screwed over his friends to go off and play with the big boys and girls in the aristocracy. Jotham used to be a superstar on the ground, in bars and clubs, talking about mutual aid, the rights of people in poverty, and the ramifications of racism, fascism, ableism, and transphobia. He was so good at it, laying down rhyme and rhythm. Ginsberg even gave him a hug in 50’s New York City, and probably more after the club was closed.

Jotham was a great organizer, getting bodies down to the civil rights marches and migrant workers’ rights protests. But in the midst of it all, something changed in Jotham. His club material grew more about modern life, less hard-edged, more encompassing, more directed away from the words that needed saying. Soon, Jotham was sharing tables at VIP rooms in the city, flashing pricey watches, and even secretly performing for Boeing executives at private parties. His friends wondered how a change like this could happen.

They didn’t know Jotham. Jotham had always been playing them. As a child, he worked the 19th century mills, joining gangs as soon as he was old enough to stop adults from pushing him around. Jotham joined the trade unions when few others had his back. He knew good whiskey when he drank it and wanted a life where he was free to enjoy it. Jotham was a good fighter and a better talker because of the nights he spent looking down the barrel of guns. He learned rhyme and rhythm from his fellow unionists. He learned organizing from his girlfriends. His days at the mill were packed as much as his evenings and you do not spend as little time for yourself as Jotham did without being scorched inside. He never had a day off. He dreamed about getting beat so hard he wouldn’t have to work. Like the women he worked beside on the line who dreamed of working the secretary’s chair where they could sit all day.

Then Jotham’s life became only nights. Sleep was off the table; only organizing. Only standing up to the Pinkertons. Only protecting his friends. Damn, he loved escaping all that on stage. Up under the lights with a hundred drunken eyes on him, where he repeated awful poetry he’d scribbled in the wee morning hours. “What does the night get me?” he wrote. “Drunker. Harder. Rustier. And maybe, if I’m in luck, one new friend.” People liked that one.

The decades passed. He moved to Seattle and, what else, joined the local Anarchists to do everything he’d done in Chicago. This was what Jotham knew, on stage and off. Here, however, he was noticed. In the streets, in the clubs. New, fresh blood. In the late 60s, he got the offer to move up in the world. To relax, to rest, for the first time. To work behind a desk in a small room laden with hardwood. To wear fancy wool coats in the winter and fine suits in the summer. His friends said he’d sold out but he was still there for them. He still spoke well for them in the halls he had made his new home. His bruising days were over and after two decades, it didn’t matter who he had left behind. Now, he was the mediator to the rich, the facilitator of all manner of acts. Jotham is at peace with this, after a lifetime of toil and labor. Everyone, even Jotham, deserves a break.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Samael (2)
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Samael (2) is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Soleil Golden.

Transcript:

George Gataker spent two days on the road from London to Norwich where he had been sent to work. Night passengers might find a carriage and driver comfortable enough to risk attacks, pot-holes, and wheel-damage under the moon-sky with miles between villages and farmers unlikely to help a stranger of even George’s standing. He was hardly a noble or a captain of industry; the son of a moderately successful storekeep and tanner in a wool suit too fine for him, sent to Norfolk county for purposes that seemed even unclear to him. William, his employer, wished for him to “maintain a presence in Norfolk, watch for newcomers, and especially those landing in seaside towns without announcement or papers.”

George clutched a bound ledger of the contacts he was to meet. They were scattered throughout the coast, far enough apart that it was impossible to see more than two a day. Exhausted, buttocks numb from the coach’s rocking, he was relieved to see the spire of Norwich Cathedral piercing up through the darkened city that was to become his home.

(“His.” They never liked “his.” There was something demoralizing about it, a host of duties for which they were not prepared nor interested in serving.)

The coach pulled to a stop by the short town estate coated in stones pressed into concrete. It wouldn’t keep warm, but nothing did, even in London; not that George needed heat anymore. Still, he looked forward to spreading the contents of his suitcase around rooms ten times the size of his former flat. He stepped from the carriage and was promptly handed his bag.

“I’ve got to get to my cousin’s for the night,” the driver said, and waited on the coins George had ready to press into his palm.

George almost broke off the heavy iron key in the ancient door’s lock. Inside, the place smelled foul, of mildew and mice, obviously kept in William’s family from long before the Restoration and only now opened in the past hundred years. George checked room after room, guest quarters, servant quarters, kitchen, for a space where there would be no guests but he, no servants but he, for a man who did not eat from kitchens. In the basement, a mouse-eaten straw bed lay in stupor, collapsing into dust when George sat on it. He groaned. For all of William’s pretty promises, George had been dumped to the coast of England where he would have to make the best of it. Certainly no one here would help. The nearest address in George’s ledger was a three hour carriage ride away. And George was hungry.

He bundled himself up to disguise his tall proportions and took to the streets. The cathedral was a short walk away; a stone wonder to the glory of man and god. But no, the town vicar would be easily missed and the driver would have announced George’s arrival to someone.

George wandered the streets, alone, a house cat taken far away and abandoned in the woods, unfamiliar with scent or space, unsure how he would make a new life here. George rested on a small wooden staircase, put his head in his hands, and if he could have, he would have wept.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.

Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Slowly, two shadowy figures come into focus, one behind the other with their hand on the other's neck. Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology. An series of vignettes from the Not Ready for Opsec Players and Alicia E. Goranson.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology
Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood Doll Anthology - Season 1 - Judith (1)
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Judith (1) is written by Alicia E. Goranson and read by Dee Arbacauskas.

Transcript:

[Read as Judith] I have always been a terrible musician. I blame it on my terrible taste in music. My latest obsession is Taylor Swift, from albums sent to me on burned Compact Discs from Esther. I hate how music has disappeared from people’s homes. Records were fine, as were cassettes and Compact Discs but then music you owned yourself vanished. You needed a phone to beg a company somewhere to send you a cut-down version of a song and my ears are very sensitive. A whole society lost control of its music and I have to beg Esther for any pop artists with music made after 2008.

I used to be in more music scenes, always in the back row of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, or the Ramones, or the Cars (I hate the Cars) in some punk club. Music was accessible then. Today, I hang out in the rafters or VIP boxes of Sodo clubs to hear what the kids are into these days, and I can’t handle all 100 of the gecs, no matter how many mushrooms I hand out to the kids around me.

Then Esther tells me that Taylor Swift is coming to Seattle. In person. At one of the stadiums, the one to the south, whatever company has branded it now. I am not known for my squeals. If anything, I’m known for causing them, both pleasurable and otherwise, but Swift’s arrival is enough to have me emit my own. Of course, long gone were the days when I could pay anyone to stand in line for tickets, and they sell out online in seconds. And I quickly determine that none of the scalpers had tickets for the VIP box seats in which I need to hide. Esther informs me I need to suck it up and talk to someone who can help. The worst person who I never want to speak to without my full compliment of bruisers ready to throw down.

Lorea agrees to meet me and yes, she has VIP box seat tickets for Swift. We meet in a small bar by the waterfront, that we break into after hours. Lorea thinks she is being clever by arriving an hour early but I have already been there for two. I will not be stood up. Everything is a power play. Lorea pours herself a shot of something and offers to get me a drink, but no, I had two hours to myself and emptied the bar of my favorite cocktails. I’m good.

We get down to business. I can sneak into Lorea’s private box at the stadium, provided I stand for the entire concert. The terms are not negotiable. If I can grow mushrooms in my belly, I have the patience to stand that long.

I retorts that I will stand provided that Lorea lets Esther come in tow. And that Lorea provides refreshments. In return, I agree to look away exactly once the next time Lorea tries to smuggle in something for which Aaralyn would typically demand a tax. Usually drugs.

The night of the show, the Link is packed. The roads are packed. The parking garages are packed. People are renting out their apartments’ driveways as parking. The streets are packed with Swifties and T-shirt salespeople. The turnstiles are packed. I am very good at sneaking but the stadium has nowhere to hide. I cover myself in a hoodie and face mask, and grudgingly join the crowd, having no idea how to reach Lorea’s VIP box otherwise. I will suffer for Swift, and then, who knows who will suffer for me.

-END-

Portions of the materials are the copyrights and trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB, and are used with permission. All rights reserved. For more information please visit worldofdarkness.com.